Preparing to Conduct the First Dissertation on Reading in America:Edmund B. Huey at Clark University

1897-1899

Douglas K. HartmanMichigan State University

dhartman@msu.edu

A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 14, 2009, 3:05-3:34pm, San Diego Convention Center/Ballroom 6A.

Preparing to Conduct the First Dissertation on Reading in America: Edmund B. Huey at Clark University—1897-1899

PurposeThe first American dissertation on the topic of reading was written by Edmund Burke Huey in 1899 at Clark University. It was titled On the Psychology & Physiology of Reading. To understand the formation of his dissertation, the study outlined in this proposal analyzed the artifacts of Huey, his graduate school cohort, his professors at Clark, and the community of colleagues in the then emerging field of psychology to understand the formative influences on this dissertation. By analyzing the intellectual and contextual influences that shaped Huey’s dissertation, the purpose of this study was to answer two questions: a) What were the intellectual influences that shaped the questions, design, analysis, and results of Huey’s dissertation? and b) What were the contextual influences—proximal (i.e., Clark University’s doctoral program) and distal (i.e., the emerging field of psychology in the academe)—that shaped Huey’s dissertation?

Framework The framework used to analyze Huey’s dissertation draws upon the work of book historians to understand the formation, design, distribution, and reception of a volume (Barker & Adams, 1994; Darnton, 1983; Eliot & Rose, 2007; Feather, 1986; Greetham, 2007).

MethodsGiven the framework used by book historians such as Darnton (1983)—which analyzes the formation of a volume through a “circuit” beginning with authors, publishers, readers, (as well as printers, suppliers, shippers, bookshippers, and books binders)—the methods of this study focused largely on the production of Huey’s dissertation. Thus, the predominant mode of tracing the intellectual influences was that of tracing the intertextual ties that are brought together in the dissertation document given the intellectual and contextual factors during the late 1890s. The details of this methodological mode were informed by the perspectives rigors outlined by reading and literacy historians in recent years (Hartman, 2003; Monaghan & Hartman, 2000, 2001, 2002; Moore, Monaghan, & Hartman, 1997; Stahl & Hartman, 2004).

Data SourcesThe data used in this study comes from nearly 50 archives, societies, and individuals in North America. To answer the first question, data was used from Huey’s pilot study and dissertation documents that were published during his doctoral studies and in the two years subsequent to his graduation from Clark University (Huey, 1898, 1900, 1901). The explicit and implicit sources that preceded these dissertation documents were then used to trace the influences on Huey’ study. To answer question two, other primary, secondary, and tertiary sources (e.g., biographies, institutional histories, etc.) were examined to construct the contextual influences on the dissertation.

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ResultsThe intellectual and contextual influences on Huey’s dissertation were considerable in number and type. A general and partial outline of the influences constructed from the data is outlined below.

Intellectual InfluencesLike many of the school-oriented young men of his day, Huey moved in the practical direction of teaching. He earned his teaching certificate at a Normal School in Valpraisio, Indiana. He then taught at schools in Indiana and Pennsylvania. He continued on to college, graduating from Lafayette College in 1895. The two years immediately following college he taught Latin at the Harry Hillman Academy in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

It was here, in 1896 that a turning point took place. As you can imagine, teaching adolescent boys to read a dead language like Latin was no small task for a teacher. Doing so challenged Huey to think in new ways … struggling readers have a way of doing that to their teachers, as you know. In his search, he crossed paths with the books of two scholars who were part of the emerging new field of psychology.

One scholar was William James from Harvard, who had published his two-volume work on the Principles of Psychology (1890), six years earlier. James’ synthesis of the scholarship was comprehensive beyond compare. It took him 12 years to write the volumes. His basic point was that the philosophical and psychological ideas that reached across the Atlantic were irrelevant for a new and modern psychology. James argued for a more functional way to conceive of the human mind. At the moment, Huey needed a more functional way to teach the minds of striving adolescents in his classes to read Latin. So his reading of James provided that functional way (Cooper, 2002; Feinstein, 1984; Richardson, 2006).

The other scholar Huey crossed paths with in his reading was Wilhelm Wundt, from the University of Leipzig. He read Wundt’s multi-volume Principles of Physiological Psychology (1873, 1874) in the original German. In those pages, he first learned how to be methodologically innovative and how to build an empirical argument. Wundt could do both exceedingly well, almost to a fault (Bringmann, Balance, & Evans, 1975; Farr, 1983; Rieber & Robinson, 2001; SEP, 2006). In fact, Wundt wrote prodigiously about so many new findings and explanations that a number of his research contributions went unrecognized for nearly a century. For instance, Wundt’s discovery that short-term memory was limited to seven or so “pieces” of information didn’t reach the light of day until George Millers (1956) article in the Psychological Review on the “Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” (http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html).

By borrowing experimental methods from the study of physiology, Wundt devised an experimental psychology that carefully observed simple events, using introspection. In

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turn, Huey innovated on Wundt’s innovations several years later in his dissertation—by analyzing what he originally thought were the simple events of reading—eye movements.

In sum, James’ and Wundt’s books were a quick and profound turning point. After reading them, Huey decided to quit teaching and pursue a Ph.D. He wrote for information about graduate study in psychology. And he continued to reread James and Wundt, experimenting with their ideas and methods—on himself and in his Latin classroom.

Contextual InfluencesTo become a “Clark man” meant three things. One was that Huey would study at the place for psychology research in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Clark had become the place largely because of G. Stanley Hall, who was President and Professor of the institution (Kump, 1996; Koelsch, 1987; Ryan, 1885). Hall and the other productive faculty at Clark played a prominent role in the development of psychology as a discipline in the U.S. When Huey went to Clark in 1897, it was referred to as “the American Mecca for aspiring young psychologists.” As one of his classmates explained, “I had thought of no other university for my doctorate” (Terman, 1930).

There were consequences to choosing Clark for doctoral study. The mantle of expectations laid on Hall’s shoulders as a young scholar were in turn laid upon the doctoral students. Hall made this clear when students nervously met with him for their first advisor appointment: after assuring us that our “splendid training” and the “fine report” from references would serve us well as psychologists, he left no doubt that he was expecting "great things" of us. It was a powerful and frequently used pedagogical device of Hall’s: He affirmed our past and present accomplishments by setting the bar for our future performance astonishingly high. As students, we fully felt the sense of responsibility put on our shoulders by Hall’s words “I’m expecting great things of you.” Given those expectations, we learned to always live in a hurry. Hall’s tempo was one of urgency. To him, being called to this newly emerging profession of psychology meant one thing: focus your intellectual energies on the truly big problems and then reason about them rigorously from data. Why? Because the opportunities are nearly boundless, the problems are painfully great, and your time on this earth is short.

Becoming a Clark man meant a second thing: Huey was fully and generously supported by a fellowship for his entire doctoral experience. Because Huey was fully and generously funded, the full force of his effort was focused on his doctoral experience.

Finally, becoming a “Clark man” meant Huey would study in one of the most unusual Ph.D. programs in America at the time, and probably since. It’s hard to describe in a few sentences what it was like to be a doctoral student at Clark in the late 1890s—because it is so different from most doctoral programs today (Terman, 1930).

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LERNFREIHEIT. The German word that my Clark classmate used, Lernfreiheit, was one of the four defining elements of Huey’s doctoral experiences at Clark. The idea of Lernfreiheit was carried to the United States in the 19th century by scholars who had studied at German universities, which Hall had done. The word literally means "learning liberty." In practice, the idea meant that Huey was free to pursue his own course of study, taking whatever courses he wanted to take whenever he wanted to take them. Put another way, there were no required courses, credit requirements, or grades for a Ph.D. at Clark. It was a graduate student’s dream. Huey thrived in this culture of of Lehrnfreiheit. It was an uninhibited place. It was a form of graduate study unencumbered by older ways of thinking and doing.

SEMINAR. The second defining element of Huey’s doctoral experience at Clark was the Monday evening seminar held at G. Stanley Hall’s house from 7:15 in the evening until midnight. It was not a course, but everyone was expected to attend. Two graduate students presented work they were doing in the psychological lab at these seminars. Thirty or so graduate students typically filled the room on Monday nights. No student missed the opportunity to present and debate with other Clark men at this Monday night gathering. Huey presented his emerging dissertation work at one of these seminars.

ELBOW LEARNING. The third defining element of Huey’s doctoral experience was “elbow learning.” As used by Hall, it meant that he worked side-by-side, elbow-to-elbow with his professors and classmates in the research labs, which were really like workshops. “Elbow learning” dominated Huey’s graduate studies at Clark. These lab settings were where the teaching and learning action took place for Huey at Clark. It was here that he carried out his dissertation study using cocaine to anesthetize the eyes of his professors so he could insert a porcelain eye cup with a short stylus on it to record their eye movements on a rotating cylinder. It was a very ingenious method for data collection.

PUBLISHING. The fourth and final defining element of Huey’s doctoral experience was the all-out effort to “publish early and often.” While the mantra to “publish early and often” never appeared in writing or spoken word, it was the organizing principle for all doctoral activity at Clark. Students were to engage with problems, peers, professors, and the profession as intellectuals at all times, so that they could publish during the first year and every subsequent year of doctoral study. Quantity didn’t matter so much as the experiences that constituted the pathway toward publishing scholarly work. But the number of publications was certainly a byproduct of the “hot housed” environment of Clark. Huey hit the ground running when in came to publishing. When he graduated from Clark, Huey had three journal articles listed on his vita that were published in the top, peer-reviewed psychology journal of the time.

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Educational and Scholarly Importance of the StudyThis study of Huey’s dissertation is important for two reasons. The first is that it traces the intellectual lineage for this first-of-its-kind dissertation in reading. The second is that it locates this lineage in the contextual tenor of academe’s movements at the time. And third—albiet indirectly—the study corrects a long-standing error in the historical record about who wrote the first dissertation in North America on the subject of reading. For over nine decades scholars have mistakenly thought that William S. Gray wrote the first dissertation on reading in 1916 at the University of Chicago (Gray 1916).

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